Jake Halpern

On a typical Monday morning , 63-year-old Judy McDevitt wakes up shortly after sunrise and walks across the creaking wooden floor of her small beach cottage to feed her dog and two cats and then get breakfast going for herself….

At first glance, the scene looks like a 30th high school reunion—balding men in golf shirts mixing with middle-aged women in eveningwear sipping drinks and chatting amiably in a garish banquet room in Braintree—but then someone turns on a microphone….

I have always been partial to gigantic engineering projects. As a kid, I spent countless hours playing a game called SimCity, which allows players to build and rebuild major urban centers where simulated people, or Sims, go about their daily…

As President George W. Bush readies himself for his many inaugural balls this month, newly elected presidents elsewhere will have a tougher go of it — and perhaps none more so than Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who will be busy…

On September 11 — as the nation commemorates the third anniversary of that dreadful day in 2001 — wedding specialist Ted Daniels will be particularly depressed. Of course, he'll be gloomy for all the obvious reasons, but now there is…

For longer than almost anyone can remember-since 1920, to be specific-New Hampshire has held its presidential primary before any other state. As a result, this small, relatively obscure state in the heart of New England has taken on a role…

Sometimes I feel as if the city of Boston is like a crotchety relative who brings out the worst in me. I go into my favorite coffee shop, buy a newspaper, look for a table, bump shoulders with a pretty…

Last fall — not long after Boston was chosen as the site of the 2004 Democratic National Convention — Dick Armey had breakfast with a roomful of reporters from the Christian Science Monitor. “If I were a Democrat,” mused the…